Old is cold?

‘The Jungle Book’, like ‘The Revenant’, is a showcase for new technology that’s making it increasingly difficult to watch older films.

Let’s begin with a quiz. You just have to name the film. It features an attack by a grizzly bear. The victim is a Caucasian man making a living in an unforgiving, inhospitable, bitterly cold setting. The protagonist, based on a character who ate liver, has a dead wife, a son who is murdered – he swears revenge. The film’s director made a big deal about publicizing how difficult the shoot was. “There are no second takes for a director to cover himself with,” he said. “There was barely enough light… the crew had to set up [a shot] at three in the morning.” Then there’s an attack by Indians. The film is headlined by a big star, known for his environmental activism, a heartthrob who played the lead in a film version of The Great Gatsby. You’ve guessed the film, of course. It’s Jeremiah Johnson, the 1972 hit that featured Robert Redford at the height of his sun-blonde Robert Redford-ness.

Not many speak of Jeremiah Johnson today, at least not as much as they do of the other big hits of 1972, like The Godfather or The Poseidon Adventure or Deliverance. The film wasn’t exactly at the top of my mind until I saw Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant, which is similar in all the ways listed above. But there’s one crucial difference, and that’s the technology available at the time of the movie’s making. Take that bear attack scene, which has now slipped into legend. The way the enraged creature lumbers towards the DiCaprio character, pockets of flesh rippling beneath its fur. The way it mauls him, tossing him around like a rag doll. The squelchy sound of its claws slashing into the flesh on his back, yielding deep rivers of blood. The dull shine of greyish claws as its foot rests on his face. The rasp of its breath, the strings of saliva as it takes a break to sniff the air, apparently wondering if this is enough proof of its superiority in these surroundings.

Compare this with the wolf attack in Jeremiah Johnson. Because they couldn’t obviously set a pack of wolves on the leading man, and because the animatronics technology that birthed such terrifying-looking wolves in The Grey was still forty-plus years away, the film had to resort to quick cuts. We see the blur of a wolf’s underside as it leaps across the screen. We see a wolf baring its fangs. We see a wolf pulling at a shoe. (Or maybe it’s a fur coat, the quick cuts make it hard to tell.) What we don’t see is man and wolf in the same frame, at least in a way that makes us fear for his life. It’s like abstract art, leaving us with the mere impression of a wolf attack, as opposed to the one in The Revenant, which we watch horrified, as though this man is really being ripped to shreds by this enormous bear.

The point isn’t about which is the better movie. (I’d pick the minimalist Jeremiah Johnson any day, over the overblown, over-praised Revenant.) What I’m talking about is how a film like The Revenant ends up making a film like Jeremiah Johnson irrelevant, old-fashioned. The older film may still appeal to critics and cinephiles who possess the antennae to tune into the cinema of any era, but to general audiences, Jeremiah Johnson, today, will be a disappointment because its frames aren’t imbued with the you-are-there-ness of today’s technology – just like the astonishingly life-like animation in the splendid new Jungle Book movie is going to make it just a little more difficult to view the simpler, cartoony frames in the 1967 classic a lot of us grew up with. Again, this isn’t about which is the better version. It’s about how, in the earlier film, the serpent Kaa’s mesmeric abilities were depicted through ever-expanding circles in the eyes – it looked like something a child would draw – whereas in the new film, Kaa’s orbs light up like chambers of hypnotic secrets. Forget Mowgli, we feel like we’re under a spell.

Even more amazing than the newness of all this technology is how quickly it becomes old. While I was entertained by this Jungle Book, my jaw didn’t quite scrape the floor the way it did when I met the shape-shifting killing machine from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, or the mother spaceship at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, or the fantastically expressive ape in King Kong – all first-time-ever experiences for me. And the reason TheJungle Book wasn’t that kind of a blow-the-mind experience was that Life of Pi has already shown us what today’s techno-magicians can whip out of a keyboard, how bits and bytes can transform into teeth and whiskers and fur to the extent that if someone placed this tiger next to the real article, no one would be able to tell the difference. Life of Pi was released in 2012, just a little over three years ago. That’s how “old” has come to be defined in Hollywood.

Will be watching it next weekend. Not overwhelmed by the songs, though. First, you don’t anymore have the diversity of English/American accents that existed in the 60s…at least not in the movies anyway (do remember some classic Yankee accents on the subway when I visited NY). Second, the delivery is too affected because they are trying to re-create music that belongs to an old and outmoded style and as a result sound too stiff and controlled compared to the swinging tempo of the originals. I think Bare Necessities song would have benefited from similar arrangements as the Bare Necessities theme.

From the trailers, liked the inclusion of blackbucks and lion tailed macaques. Would have been nice if they had honoured the extremely endangered barasingha/swamp deer, of which one of the most important populations lives in Kanha. They have, hopefully?

I think there is also something to be said about The Jungle Book now being made for adults. Its emphasis on ‘realistic’ vfx is perhaps largely a way to reach and convince the adults in the audience? Because as a child, I was sufficiently creeped out and afraid of the animated Kaa and his hypnotic abilities. It just doesn’t seem enough anymore, for this Jungle Book for all.

I think there is also something to be said about The Jungle Book now being made for adults.

Esp nostalgia is a big market now. But it’s also what BR said. FX has progressed out of sight. Today’s kids won’t find King Kong scary, so Jungle Book even with live action and 3D is still pretty cuddly. I genuinely found Shere Khan’s entry scary in the original when I watched it as a child. I still think it’s a magnificently constructed scene and his entry magisterial but that’s a different discussion.

Could be a Mughal emperor? In the Kipling book, he was also referred to as langda IIRC being the crippled tiger, so it could even mean Bahadur Shah Zafar, specifically. Both the book and the 1967 film are full of references.

The movie definitely was a treat for the little ones at my place. I enjoyed it too. But, I had this urge to play the good old version which I had grown watching as soon as we got bck home just to make sure my favourite charecter in the movie, Baalu, hadn’t changed his ways of living. He wasn’t a manipulative bear using mowgli to get his honey. He wasn’t the one who cared the least if it meant for mowgli to get stung as long as he got what he wanted. This wasn’t the reason for what they stuck on to each other. In the original, Baalu was this caring big brother -friend kind of a charecter who took great care of mowgli, fed him fruits and wanted mowgli to be with him just so that they can simply be with each other. He was there for mowgli when Mowgli needed someone to be on his side. Here, they had put mowgli in a fix, as just because he didn’t want to go back to the man village he had no choice but to stay put with this bear who lies to him just to get his errands run. I loved baalu back then and I found a great friend in him for all that unconditional love that he could shower on mowgli. Sadly, this new version had baalu’s charecter all wrong. We definetly are discussing just an animation movie that is not to be scrutinized and is to be only enjoyed. And that is why we are not talking about the fauna and flora shown on screen. If kanha it was, that was supposed to be shown, it would have been a deciduous forest – not so much so appealing to the eyes. So much green was necessary when it has to be a forest that we are talking about. My only concern is just that when such a beautiful subtle message can be left across in young minds through this powerful media, why tweak it? Could have let Baalu be as he was.

Sowmya: The book’s version of baloo the bear was very different from either of the movies and people who read the book had huge objections to the charactisation you love so much. Baloo was a stricter care taker than bageera.

This baloo may not be perfect but then why should he be perfect just because he was in our childhood memory? The childhood memory of this generation may have a different baloo but isn’t that a part of the deal?

I personally didn’t like the elephants being so intimidating and unapproachable in this version or the orangutan being so large but overall I thought it was adapted very well.

I must have watched the original version over 200 times and that too recently and the story being reasonably different is why I liked it. I missed the jolly vultures singing ‘we are friends’ too. But they didn’t fit every character in. That is what I liked about this one.

@soumya :And that is why we are not talking about the fauna and flora shown on screen. If kanha it was, that was supposed to be shown, it would have been a deciduous forest

Agreed. But with that said, the old animated version did capture the essence of a lush Indian forest well. Note the elephant herd crushing bamboos in their wake as they set off in search for Mowgli. It’s a nice touch. Also, imagining Shere Khan as a treacherous king with quiet authority and cunning. It is exactly like the stealth artist that the tiger is. He catches both Kaa and the vultures unawares because he is so silent and smooth. I have yet to see the new one but just the trailer seems to suggest that this Shere Khan is more like the bitter, wounded tiger of Kipling’s book. Which is fine as far as it goes but it’s an irony that, but for the curious import from Borneo, the 1967 film corrected some of the anomalies in the Kipling book and captured the forest better. Turned Baloo into a sloth bear rather than a brown bear; brown bears are only found in the Himalayas and not in Kanha.

@ Rahini: From reviews – all of which seem to suggest it’s still a retread of the 67 film – as well as trailers, it seems to me more and more that this film owes more to the Kipling book. The Shere Khan trailer is from The Second Jungle Book, which also anoints Haathi as the ‘real’ king. It will be an interesting watch. The original script for Jungle Book was supposedly dark and brooding and Mr.Walt would have none of it and asked for a Disney film. I still think it’s the most rip-roaring, rollicking animated film they have done. But surely there is no point in making the same film all over again, that too with CGI instead of beautiful hand drawn cartoons. At least the trailers suggest this film has more edge than the ‘original;.

The article ‘Old is cold?’ didn’t bring any reference to ‘The Jungle Book’ the animation film that was telecast on Doordarshan on Sundays at 9 a.m. in 1990s with a catchy song “Jungle jungle baat chali hai” written by Gulzar and music by Vishal Bhardwaj which was popular in the mouths of young children The film has remained as one of the popular entertainment in those days. It has run into 52 episodes. The animated shows Mowgli, the protagonist in a very playful mood. He is very small boy doing all types of antics with his companions in the forest. As your title suggests, ‘Old is cold’, can we presume that as this animated film is more than two-decades old, hence for the present generation of satellite-private channels and HD channel viewers on small screens or DTS viewers on big screens can relegate ‘The Jungle Book’ which was telecast on Doordarshan of 1990s- to cold.

@Srinivas – The old Jungle book BR is referring to is the 1967 Disney animated movie, and not the TV show that you are referring to. The TV show that was telecast in the 90’s as “The Jungle Book” was a dub of a Japanese anime version called “Jungle Book Shōnen Mowgli” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Book_Sh%C5%8Dnen_Mowgli.

“What I’m talking about is how a film like The Revenant ends up making a film like Jeremiah Johnson irrelevant, old-fashioned”

Archaic effects can be overlooked if the film itself was superbly written and well cast with a director who had a flair for staging the scenes.

After the city-leveling destruction of Man Of Steel, the original Supes Vs Zod dust-up in Richard Lester’s Superman 2 may seem tame, but Christopher Reeves’ perfect embodiment of a noble Man Of Steel and Terrence Stamps’ chilling portrayal of Zod gave their fight a gravitas that the dour Henry Cavill and an over-the-top Michael Shannon couldn’t muster.

Terminator 2:Judgement Day is still endlessly re-watchable because it was paced like a rocket, crisply written and edited with style, making any “dating” of the effects a minor issue.
Terminator:Genisys, for all the money modern-day advancements in CGI could provide, remains a stain on the franchise.

Can’t really do the Revenant/Jeremiah Johnson comparison as JJ is one of those Redford movies I was never keen on seeing because of the simple fact that I can’t buy The Golden Boy in any non-urban role. Imagining Redford as a Wilderness Man is like seeing Arvind Swamy in a film like Paruthi Veeran. There was always something altogether too polished about Redford, who himself cultivated that image assiduously (unlike the equally fab-looking Paul Newman who could straddle the earthy and elite worlds with consummate ease) , to buy him as anything other than a polished product of privilege, wealth and education.

Hmm I don’t know whether the new version of Jungle book will make the old one irrelevant to the general audience as such. The special effects have come a long way, yes, but the old movie still does have a lot of charm and wit and (still) definitely makes spending a lazy Sunday afternoon with a couple of young pre-teen cousins a lot easier! Having said that, what you have written is indeed true of most modern versions of movies like King Kong, Godzilla etc.

“Even more amazing than the newness of all this technology is how quickly it becomes old. ”

That is so true. The progress rate is astonishing and I sometimes like to think about what the next big innovation would be (like motion capture). One thing that I so want to happen in my lifetime is for augmented/virtual reality concept to be made available as a common movie-watching experience like 3d is these days. A headset or a pair of glasses should be all it takes to transport one INTO the movie (not unlike the Pensieve in Harry Potter). And I think in that version of Jungle book (remake of old movies is one thing that I don’t expect to change at all), the viewer would be standing quite literally next to Mowgli when he gets mesmerised by Kaa. The development of this technology would then open a whole other set of possibilities I think – taking interactive movie experience to a whole new level.

Coming back to reality, one special effects movie that I want to watch is Swiss Army Man. The trailer looks such fun.

While we are on the topic of old vs new, shall we talk about Batman from 1966 as against any of the new ones? 😂😂 In my opinion, that was the worst batman movie ever made be it acting or technology or the story!

“Archaic effects can be overlooked if the film itself was superbly written and well cast with a director who had a flair for staging the scenes.”

Excellent point Kay Kay. Some films don’t age at all. Buster Keaton’s The General – 90 years old now- never ceases to astonish me, no matter how many times I’ve seen it. The breathtaking stunts, brilliant set pieces, Buster’s stoic performance will always be fresh in our memory no matter how many times it’s been parodied by the likes of Jackie Chan and others. Most recent example being The Lone Ranger which was horrible. Same holds true for other masterpieces like Stagecoach, Lawrence of Arabia, Jaws, Star Wars, Alien, E.T., Terminator and so.

I’m one of the few people who really liked The Revenant and thought Leo’s Oscar win was entirely deserving. Lubezki’s cinematography and Innaritu’s craftsmanship ensured that the audience felt the cold in their bones as if they were there in the snowy terrains. Mere technology and gimmicks couldn’t achieve it. Haven’t seen Jeremiah Johnson so no comments on it.

Regarding Jungle Book, Bill Murray was terrific as Baloo and Lupita Nyong’o as Raksha but none of the other actors left any impression on me. Christopher Walken’s Louie was downright silly. It seems Warner Brothers are coming up with a version of Jungle Book using motion capture animation. Andy Serkis is helming the project with a star-studded cast including Christian Bale(Bhageera), Benedict Cumberbatch(Shere Khan), Cate Blanchett(Kaa) etc…Looking forward to it.

What’s with Disney churning out live action versions of their acclaimed animation pictures? Cinderella, now Jungle Book. Beauty and the Beast and Pinocchio are expected soon. It takes the magic of animation out of it. I won’t be surprised if Johny Depp plays Steamboat Wille in future.

After I walked out of the movie hall, I can remember baring the last scene of Shere Khan, all scenes of him were terrifying and intense.

The film for me can be broken into 4-5 sequences each given like 15-30 mins of time slot thats why the end effect for me was like something was definitely missing in the movie to mend all the parts together.

I loved the CGI work, voices of the star cast and the little kid cannot be ignored for being a sweet little kid.

Btw was it just me but Shere Khan did visit the peace rock but didn’t drink water? And how come the animals didn’t know the real word for “red flower” when they knew all the words which we humans have given to them like tiger, elephant , wolf or monkey?

Kay Kay, oh no, Jeremiah Johnson is Redford’s greatest screen performance IMO.it is true , he is very polished and sophisticated , but still there is a wild maverick streak in him.it comes real handy for this film. also i dont know if there was any other actor who can speak so much through mere silences. there is a scene after the interval, where redford returns to his cabin to find his family murdered by the natives. its almost a 5 min long scene with no dialogue, he just sits there with the corpse of his wife and child as day turns to night and night to day.and then he sets out for revenge. the way his expressions changes , just marvelous. the di caprios of the world doesnt come anywhere near him. this is also sydney pollock’s best imo, beats out tootsie by a whisker for the sheer visual bravado.

Give me a frame animated Colonel Haathi and his troupe going “Hup 2-3-4” any day. Give me a Sher Khan scratching his whiskered goatee with a sharp claw, in a rasping sinister voice any day. Give me the 4 vultures named after The Beatles with their incessant chatter before the grand climax any day. Just give me back my memories of watching The Jungle Book in 1982 at Sterling Cinema in Mumbai – as a wide eyed 7 year old, who was so enamored by it all, that he went on to quaff a zillion Gold Spots just to collect the Jungle Book characters from below the bottle caps and paste them on to a specially made album. It’s that innocent charm which is lost on today’s cinema goers. Took my 6 year old daughter to see the new version. And though she was impressed, she didn’t seem to have the same sense of wonderment I did at her age. That’s because she’s exposed today to stuff that’s so way ahead in terms of technology, that despite all the advancements what it lacks is that primal spirit of the 1967 original – it’s called ‘soul’. And no technology can ever replicate that.

I can recall like yesterday when in my teens we went FOUR times with our uncle to get tickets for the 1967 original only to come back empty handed. And there were NO children in the theatre. There were many foremen, workers from Simpsons ltd for sure.

Today I will finally be watching the new one. But on Friday I caught Jurassic Park on TV, expecting to find it underwhelming after all these years. And it wasn’t, not even close. I had to switch soon after THAT T Rex scene because it was getting to bedtime. But what struck me was how well that scene was staged. Spielberg puts the focus on the fear in the minds of the hapless humans. Also, the nice little detail of the cup of water trembling as if due to an earthquake when the T Rex rumbles forth. Spielberg, like Hitchcock, was clued into the pyschological effect of the scenes and not just the spectacle. This is what less impressive monster films like Anaconda missed out on and ended up dulling the genre through sheer overkill. Spielberg wedded great FX to great film making. I have always felt he would get more credit if he wasn’t making Jurassic Park or ET and more serious films instead (not that he didn’t – Munich, Schindler’s List). The only thing I found annoying about the film after all these years was John Williams’s score which was apt but so predictable and almost like a copy-paste of his work over the years. Someone like Danny Elfman gets less appreciation compared to the good but overrated JW/Hans Zimmer.

MANK, thanks to your impassioned defence of JJ, have downloaded it and will watch it soon.

“i dont know if there was any other actor who can speak so much through mere silences”

Oh, I have no doubt about Redford’s acting talent, and ironically feel he’s been underrated in that department owing to his movie star good looks. Have you seen All Is Lost? It’s practically a 90-minute silent movie with Redford as a man struggling to survive in the ocean after his boat is wrecked. It’s a one-man show, virtually dialogue-free with Redford’s weathered face and eyes conveying his struggle.

@ Jitaditya: Yup, they could have used the buffalo chase ending from the book instead of this borrowed-from-Lion-King climax.

Overall, I thought it was a good film and I enjoyed it (mostly) but I also thought it was made-for-70mm-only, like other 3D extravaganzas like Avatar or the new Star Wars. Did I say today’s kids would still find Jungle Book cuddly even with 3D? I am not so sure after watching! I remember when I was 8, I happened to go to Mysore Zoo on a day a male lion was injured and in resisting the treatment he was roaring loudly. I found it terrifying. Shere Khan in the film was as real as that roaring lion.

Where I felt the film faltered was in trying to pander to those nostalgic for the old film and trying to reproduce some of the dialogues from that film. When in the old film Bagheera tells Baloo that he must take Mowgli to the man-village “because he won’t listen to me”, it is convincing because Mowgli is drawn as a naive and gullible kid too intrepid for his own good. In this film, Bagheera tells him “You are the only one he will listen to” (note the subtle difference) and it is very unconvincing. Mowgli has already barely escaped Shere Khan once so he KNOWS why Bagheera wants to take him to the man village unlike in the old film. So the idea that only Baloo can take him to the village when Mowgli remains obedient to Bagheera is very forced. Kaa and Louie were very sketchy with the only saving grace that Kaa brings up the back story and Louie sets up the climax by telling Mowgli of Shere Khan’s latest exploits.

The tempo of the film was terrific in the beginning. I wish they had stuck to the film they set out to make instead of diluting it in trying to somehow tie it to the 1967 film. That film was like an Alice in Wonderland version of Kipling’s book, brilliant and inimitable. The majestic 3D forest could have been used to make a racier and grittier film. It started out that way but got dragged down in the middle, getting better in the climax only to now try to evoke the modern Holy Grail of Disney, viz, Lion King. Doesn’t help that I don’t like Lion King THAT much; I don’t see it as the apex of the classic animated era (i.e pre fully computerised) which it is sometimes touted to be.